Coalition Implores Biden to Act as Abbott’s ‘Campaign of Cruelty’ Separates Families

The #WelcomeWithDignity campaign for asylum rights on Monday condemned what it called Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “unconscionable” decision to “repeat one of the most horrific and cruel practices of the Trump administration” by separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Houston Chronicle reported last week that officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have separated at least 26 families by arresting fathers on trespassing charges and transferring relatives including small children to U.S. Border Patrol custody.

Experts said family separation deeply traumatized parents and children, who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again. Some may indeed never be reunited. Numerous children were given to U.S. families, who sometimes petition for permanent custody.

“During the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, I witnessed how family separation inflicts lasting trauma on the parents and children who were cruelly torn apart,” Katharina Obser, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said in a statement Monday.